Cody McCormick was placed on waivers this morning by the Sabres, and he’s an interesting option for teams in need of a bottom-six forward. The 6’3”, 221 forward has played at both centre and on the wing over the course of his 329-game NHL career. As recently as 2010-11, he was a 20-point player. That sounds like modest production, and it is, but given McCormick’s role it’s also pretty respectable production. McCormick played more than 10:00 per game in Buffalo that season, and he fought 16 times.

In other words, the appeal of Cody McCormick is that at his best he has the size and pugilistic willingness of a model energy line player, but he can handle a regular shift and contribute in other areas, too. There are a lot of teams in the league that love exactly that combination.

The question is whether McCormick is at his best. In 2011-12, he struggled through a series of injuries (including a concussion, though there has been no indication that the head injury has slowed his willingness to play a physical game – McCormick already has two fights this season in eight games and had eight bouts in 50 contests last year). McCormick ended up scoring one and contributing just four points that season; in eight games this season he’s been held pointless.

Is this a slump brought on by injury, or an indication that McCormick’s best days are behind him? A looked at some of the underlying statistics (courtesy of behindthenet.ca) might be helpful here.

First, some explanation. After listing the seasons and games played (no 2009-10 season is listed because McCormick played in the AHL that year), the first column is 5-on-5 PTS/60 – the number of points scored in an average hour of 5-on-5 play. The second is what’s called relative Corsi – basically a plus/minus of shots, missed shots and blocked shots in 5-on-5 situations, adjusted for team strength, which allows us to see what end of the rink the puck was in with the player on the ice. Zone start shows which zone the player started most of his shifts in – a number over 50% indicates that he started more than half his non-neutral zone shifts in the offensive zone, while a number under 50% indicates he started more shifts in the defensive zone. Finally, PDO is the combination of shooting and save percentage with a player on the ice 5-on-5.

McCormick, obviously, isn’t much of a scorer. He’s varied between “awful” and “decent for a role player” over his NHL career – if he can score 1.33 points/60 consistently as an energy guy, he’ll always play in the NHL (that’s Ben Eager country), but guys who score in the 0.50 – 0.75 points/60 range typically don’t last in the majors. Since he’s put up both numbers, which is he? It’s impossible to be certain, but note the drop in PDO over his last 58 games – looking at the Sabres’ numbers, with McCormick on the ice they had a miserable 2.81 shooting percentage last year, and a 0.00 shooting percentage this year. In the years where PDO was near the league average (around 100), McCormick has generally been a decent scorer – and I’d argue the drop in shooting percentage for his entire line, rather than his own situation, is the most likely cause for McCormick’s offensive failings.

Taking into account the fact that McCormick frequently was starting in his own end, and generally played on lower lines (lower lines tend to get hammered on the shot clock because every so often they’re on the ice against good lines), McCormick’s Corsi numbers look pretty good up until this season – just slightly in the red, despite playing as a depth guy and starting a lot of shifts in his own end. This season’s numbers are awful – but given that they’re over just eight games, and that a lot of them come from blocked shots (McCormick’s line has, on average, blocked twice as many shots as the other team but is roughly even with the opposition in terms of shots and missed shots), I would be hesitant to put a lot of emphasis on those totals.

Putting all of this data together, it looks to me like McCormick is a fairly legitimate two-way guy 5-on-5, who can score just enough to be useful while adding the size and physical presence NHL teams like. As a fourth line player, plenty of teams are making do with worse; I like him as a potential waiver pickup in general terms.

But does he make sense for the Oilers? Partially, it really depends whether he’s playing on the wing or at centre. In the pivot position, he needs only to be an upgrade on Chris VandeVelde. On the wing, he makes no sense – the Oilers have an abundance of capable wingers for the bottom-six, and are facing a roster crunch when Ryan Jones returns from injury (which is expected in the near future).

McCormick has largely played on the wing both this season and last, but interestingly spent significant time at centre in his two most productive NHL campaigns. The bad news is that he’s not an answer for the Oilers faceoff woes – he won just 41.8 percent of his 316 faceoffs in 2010-11. Chris VandeVelde was just over 50% in 159 faceoff attempts in that same year, which happens to be the season he took the most draws. Also working against McCormick is the fact that he hasn’t seen significant use on the penalty kill in recent seasons.

It’s a choice between an internal candidate (VandeVelde) who wins faceoffs and kills penalties and an external candidate (McCormick) who plays a more robust physical game and has a longer track record of effective two-way play in the NHL. It’s a close call, but in the Oilers’ shoes I’d lean toward claiming McCormick except for his contract. McCormick is in the second year of a three-year, $3.6 million deal, and even with the reduction in his salary in year three (his cap hit stays at $1.2 million but his actual salary drops to $1.0 million) that’s a lot of money for a decent fourth-liner. Taking the dollars into account, the Oilers are better off sticking with VandeVelde.

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